admiration and disgust: the ambivalent re-canonization of the

Admiration and Disgust: The AmbivalentRe-Canonization of the Zohar

in the Modern Period

Boaz Huss

I

Sefer ha-Zohar, a collection of Kabbalistic writings from the end ofthe 13th and the beginning of the 14th century which, as is known, wereattributed to Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, enjoyed a canonical status withinJewish culture during the early modern period. From the end of the15th century on, Sefer ha-Zohar was accepted as the main source ofauthority in the field of Kabbalah as well as being regarded a centralauthority on questions of custom and halakhah. This was initially thecase among circles of Sephardic Jewry and their descendents;subsequently it has become accepted as such among other Jewishcommunities throughout the world. Whereas during the 16th and 17th

centuries the Zohar enjoyed a limited circulation only, primarily amongthe intellectual elite within the various Jewish communities, from theend of the 17th and throughout the course of the 18th century, theZohar was far more widely circulated, its influence being felt in broadsectors of the Jewish public.1

But during this same period, along with the reception of the Zoharas a canonical text, criticism of its attribution to Rabbi Simeon barYohai and its authoritative, sanctified status were voiced. Such

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1 For the history of the reception of Sefer ha-Zohar, see I. Tishby, The Wisdom ofthe Zohar, Oxford 1989, pp. 23-39; B. Huss, 'Sefer Ha-Zohar as a Canonical,Sacred and Holy Text: Changing Perspectives of the Book of Splendor betweenthe Thirteenth and Eighteenth Centuries', Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy7 (1998), pp. 257-307; idem., 'Sabbatianism and the Reception of Sefer ha-Zohar'[Hebrew], in: Ha-Óalom ve-Shivro [The Dream and its Resolution: The SabbatianMovement and its Offshoots - Messianism, Sabbatianism and Frankism =Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 16-17 (2001)], pp. 53-71.

criticism - including that of R. Elijah del Medigo at the end of the 15th

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century and of R. Judah Aryeh (Leon) of Modena at the beginning ofthe 17th century - not widely accepted at the time, did not damage theZohar's stature. The criticism leveled by R. Jacob Emden, in his bookMitpa˙at Sefarim (1768), had a greater impact. Emden questioned theantiquity and authority of the Zohar within the context of his struggleagainst its popularization and also against the remnants of Sabbatians,among whom Sefer ha-Zohar enjoyed significant status.2

With the rise of the Enlightenment movement, towards the end ofthe 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, censure of the Kabbalahin general and of the Zohar in particular became more outspoken. Thesecond generation of Maskilim ['Enlightened' Jews] in Germany wereextremely harsh in their critique of the Zohar and the Kabbalah, thepolemic against which played a central role in the activity of EasternEurope Maskilim throughout the 19th century. The Enlightenmentcriticism of the Kabbalah and the Zohar exerted a decisive influenceon the nature of Jewish culture in the modern period. The Kabbalahlost its central place and the Zohar ceased to enjoy an authoritativeand sanctified status among most of the circles which in one way oranother adopted the values of the European Enlightenment. By contrast,among the more traditional circles, who rejected the values of theEnlightenment and struggled against the Haskalah movement, the Zohar

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2 For the history of criticism of the Zohar up to the period of the Haskalah, see: I.Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, pp. 30-38; On the criticism of the distributionof the Zohar to extensive circles in the 18th century and the involvement ofSabbatian circles therein and attempts to limit the involvement of Zohar to therabbinic elite, see Huss, 'Sabbatianism and the History', pp. 69-71.

3 On Zohar criticism during the Enlightenment period, see Tishby, The Wisdom ofthe Zohar, pp. 43-50. One should note that in traditional circles as well, bothHasidic and Mitnagdic, there is a decline in the involvement in Kabbalah and theZohar in the 19th century. On restrictions on the study of Kabbalah amongLithuanian circles in the 19th century and the gradual decline in study thereof,see A. Nadler, The Faith of the Mitnagdim; Rabbinic Response to Hasidic Rapture,Baltimore and London 1997, p. 35; R. Schochet, 'Lithuanian Kabbalah as anIndependent Trend within the History of Kabbalah' [Hebrew], Kabbalah 10(2004), pp. 202-203. In certain Hasidic circles as well a distinct withdrawal fromthe study of Kabbalah can be observed. Regarding the tradition that the BaalShem Tov prohibited the study of Kabbalistic works (due to the fear of a corporealunderstanding of the Godhead), see R. Menahem Mendel b. Dov Baer Schneersohn(author of Ûemah Ûedeq), Derekh Mitzvotekha, New York 1970, fol. 115b; cf.

continued to maintain its authoritative and sacrosanct standing.3

The Ambivalent Re-Canonization of the Zohar in the Modern Period

Parallel to traditional groups who preserved the Zohar in its canonicalstatus, there began to emerge among the enlightened circles withinEuropean Jewry certain cultural agents who rejected the wholesaledismissal of the Kabbalah and Zohar and called for a renewed evaluationthereof. These thinkers, acting from a Romantic, neo-Romantic ornationalist perspective, primarily emphasized the historical,philosophical and literary values of the Kabbalah and of Sefer ha-Zohar.Their attempts to assign a central place to the Zohar in modern Jewishculture were only partially successful. The limited nature of this successderived primarily from the fact that those engaged in the renewedcanonization of the Kabbalah and Sefer ha-Zohar, coming from withinthe modernist framework of discourse, held an ambivalent attitudetowards Jewish mysticism and towards those traditionalists, both inEastern Europe and in Muslim countries, who maintained the oldKabbalistic tradition. Their ambivalent re-canonization of the Zohar,which combined admiration and disgust - an expression which I takefrom the writings of both Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem -determined, at least until recently, the attitude towards the Zohar andKabbalah in modern Israeli and Jewish culture.

II

Before turning to a discussion of the attempts at 're-canonization' ofthe Zohar, I wish to briefly discuss the 'de-canonization' of the Zoharduring the Enlightenment period. Whereas a categorical rejection ofthe Kabbalah and Zohar had not yet taken shape among the earliest

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Schochet, 'Lithuanian Kabbalah', p. 195. On the claim of R. Meshulam Feibushof Zbarazh in his Yosher Divrei Emet, that the Zohar and the Lurianic writingsmay only be understood by a small minority who attain devequt (mysticalattachment to God), see M. Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic , Albany1995, pp. 36-37. On reservations about study of Zohar and Kabbalah in theHasidic schools of Prsyzsucha–Kotzk, see R. Mahler, Hasidism and the JewishEnlightenment, Philadelphia 1985, pp. 269-270; S. Maggid, Hasidism on theMargin, Madison 2003, p. 12. The limitation in the involvement in Kabbalahduring this period derives in part from the critique of the dissemination of Zoharto broader circles during the 18th century (see n. 2 above), and it may be in partalso the influence of the maskilic critique.

4 Mendelssohn and Wessely did not categorically reject Kabbalah, and even quoted

Maskilim in Germany,4 once we turn to the second generation of the

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Haskalah,5 such a critique did occupy a central place in the culturalpraxis of the Maskilim in both Western and Eastern Europe, within theframework of building a modern Jewish identity and the struggle againstHasidism. The Maskilim sought to create a new Jewish identity, whosepast encompassed the Bible, classical Rabbinic Judaism, and medievalphilosophy, and whose present was identified with the Enlightenmentmovement. The Maskilim contrasted this 'enlightened Judaism' with akind of negative image of a backward Judaism that began with theKabbalah and Zohar, and continued through Lurianic Kabbalah,Sabbatianism and Hasidism. The debunking of the antiquity of Seferha-Zohar strengthened the Maskilim's claim that the Kabbalah was notan ancient Jewish tradition. Attaching to Kabbalah and Hasidism wasthe ethical stain of claiming a book which was essentially a forgery astheir basic source. Thus, for example, the Galician Maskil, Judah LeibMises, in his work, Qin’at ha-Emet (Vienna, 1828) writes the following:

You shall find another evil disease among them, an ancientleprosy that attaches itself to their souls, which serves as anadversary to the wise of heart who attempt to correct their beliefsand improve their ways. This evil is the belief implanted in their

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from the Zohar and other kabbalistic literature in their writings. See J. Katz,Halakhah ba-MeΩar, Jerusalem 1992, pp. 95-99. On the question of Mendelssohn'sattitude to Kabbalah, see in particular R. Horwitz, Yahudut Rabat Panim: Sifrutve-Hagut, Jerusalem 2003, pp. 11-74. While Solomon Maimon rejected theKabbalah, he thought it had once had a true and valid core that was lost overtime. See Idel, Hasidism, pp. 37-39; and in extenso, on his attitude towardsKabbalah, see C. Schulte, 'Kabbalah in Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte',in: E. Goodman-Thau, G. Mattenklott and C. Schulte eds., Kabbalah und dieLiterature der Romantik: Zwischen Magie und Trope, Tübingen 1999, pp. 48-66.An ambivalent and complex attitude to Kabbalah was expressed by R. IsaacSatanow; see N. Rezler-Bershon, 'Isaac Satanow: An Epitome of an Era', LeoBaeck Institute Year Book 25 (1980), pp. 87-88; Horwitz, Yahadut Rabat Panim,pp. 20-23.

5 Severe criticism of Kabbalah appears in Ketav Yosher by Shaul Levin-Berlin,printed anonymously in Berlin, apparently in 1794 (see Y. Friedlander, Peraqimba-Satira ha-‘Ivrit be-Shilhei ha-Me’ah ha-Y”Ó be-Germania , Tel Aviv 1980,pp. 66, 91-113) and in the satirical play by Aharon Wolfson-Halle, Si˙a be-Eretzha-Óayyim, which was also published anonymously in installments in vol. 7 ofHa-Me’asef, between 1794 and 1797 (see Friedlander, op cit., pp. 145-197).

hearts involving many vain things, which they refer to by the


names of 'knowledge and wisdom of the Kabbalah', as well astheir powerful attachment to the sanctity of Sefer ha-Zohar.6

The classic formula of the Maskilim reflecting the negative approachto Kabbalah, which enjoyed extremely broad influence, was that byHeinrich Graetz, who referred to the Zohar as 'The Book of Lies'. Heblamed the Zohar that it 'blunted the sense for the simple and the true,and created a visionary world, in which the souls of those who zealouslyoccupied themselves with it were lulled into a sort of half-sleep, andlost the faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong'.7

However, along with this harsh criticism of the Kabbalah on thepart of 19th century champions of Enlightenment, a number of WesternEuropean Jewish thinkers and scholars expressed a more sympatheticapproach. One of the most explicit expressions of this view is found inthe book by Adolphe Franck, a French Jewish scholar of law andphilosophy, entitled La Kabbale, ou la philophie religieuse des Hébreux(Paris, 1843; translated into German a year later by Adolph Jellinek).8

Many chapters of this book are devoted to establishing the antiquity ofthe Zohar, to a description of its exegetical method and an analysis ofits religious doctrines. Franck (who based himself on a partial Latintranslation of the Zohar) argued that the Zohar was in fact based uponthe teachings of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, which were initiallytransmitted orally and subsequently set down in writing, until theywere edited in a final manner in the 13th century. According to Franck,Sefer ha-Zohar is deserving of preservation, primarily because of itshistorical value. According to him, Sefer ha-Zohar, like Sefer ha-

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6 Y. L. Mises, Qin’at ha-Emet, Vienna 1828, p. 134.

7 H. Graetz, History of the Jews, Philadelphia 1897, vol. 14, p. 23.8 On Franck and his book, see Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, pp. 47-48; P. B.

Fenton, 'La cabbale et l'academie', Pardes 19-20 (1994), pp. 219-222. The bookis based upon Franck's 1839 lecture, which was published in article form in 1841under the title 'Sur la Kabbale, lus dans la séance du 17 août 1839', Memoires del'Academie des Sciences Morales et Memoires Politiques de l'Institute de France,I (1841), pp. 195-348. Cf. Fenton, ibid., p. 236 n. 11. Further editions of 'LaKabbale' were published in 1889 and 1892. In addition to the translation intoGerman, the book was published in Hebrew in 1909 and in English in 1921; seeFenton, ibid., p. 222.

YeΩirah, is:

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… a creation of several generations. Whatever may be the valueof the doctrines that they incorporate, they will always be worthyof preservation as a monument to the patient struggle of a peoplefor intellectual freedom during a period of religious tyranny.But that is not all. The system that they present constitutes, byvirtue of its source and its influence, an extremely importantelement in the history of human thought.9

Similar approaches to the Kabbalah and the Zohar appear among otherscholars of the period. For example, Meyer Heinrich Landauer, whoexpressed great interest in the Kabbalah, and who in his Wesen undForm des Pentateuch (Stuttgart, 1838), even before the publication ofFrancks' book, argued the antiquity of the Zohar. While Landauer laterchanged his mind and attributed the Zohar to R. Abraham Abulafia,this did not alter the great interest and esteem in which he held theZohar.10 Other scholars, including Solomon Munk11 and Ignatz Stern,12

also adopted Franck's position that the Zohar, notwithstanding its lateediting, incorporates earlier strata as well. Other scholars rejectedFranck's claim regarding the antiquity of the Zohar, but in order to

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9 'Ces deux livres, encore une fois, ne sont pas moins que l'oevre de plusiersgenerations. Quelle que soit la valeur des doctrines qu'ils enseignent, ils meriteronttoujours d'être conserve comme un monument des longs et patients efforts de laliberté intellectuelle, au sein d'un people et dans un temps sur lesquels le despotismereligieux s'est exerce avec le plus d'energie. Mais tel n'est pas leur seul titer anôtre interet: ainsi que nous l'avons déjà dit, et comme on ne tardera pas à enêtre convaincu, le système qu'ils renfermet est par lui-même, par son origine etpar l'influence qu'il a exercée, un fait très important dans l'histoire de la penséehumaine'. A. Franck, La Kabbale, ou la Philosophie religieuse des Hebreux,Paris 1843, p. 140 (English: A. Franck, The Kabbalah, the Religious Philosophyof the Hebrews, New York 1995, p. 62). And cf. M. Idel, Kabbalah: NewPerspectives, New Haven 1988, pp. 8-9.

10 See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 7, and in extenso, E. Goodman-Thau,'Meyer Heinrich Hirsch Landauer - Eine Brücke zwischen Kabbalah undaufgeklärtem Judentum', in Kabbalah und die Literature der Romantik (above,n. 4), pp. 249-275.

11 See Salmon Munk, Mélange de philosophie juive et arabe. Paris 1859, p. 276;on Munk's approach to Kabbalah, see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 9.

12 Ignatz Stern, 'Versuch einer umständlichen Analyse des Sohar', Ben Chananja1-5 (1858-1862). For details, see G. Scholem, Bibliographia Kabbalistica, Leipzig1927, pp. 151-152; and cf. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 49.

disprove his opinion devoted detailed historical studies to this work.


David Heiman Joel, in reaction to Franck's book, wrote his Midrashha-Zohar: Die Religionsphilosophie des Sohar und ihr Verhäeltnis zurallgemeinen jüedischen Theologie; Zugleich eine Kritische Beleuchtungder Franck'schen 'Kabbalah' (Leipzig, 1849), in which he refutedFranck's claim regarding foreign influences upon the Kabbalah andargued that the Zohar expresses the authentic Jewish theology of theMiddle Ages.13 Adolph Jellinek, who had translated Franck's workinto German, devoted his own book, Moses ben Schemtob de Leonund sein Verhältnis zum Sohar (1851), to proving Moses de Leon'sauthorship of the Zohar. Notwithstanding the fact that Jellinek's researchstrengthened the critics of the Zohar and his studies served as the basisfor Graetz's harsh attack on the Zohar, his own approach to Kabbalahand to Zohar was far more positive. The intention of his research was,as phrased in his own words:

… to arouse more interest in an area of great importance for thehistory of philosophy and theology … Among the Kabbalistsare people who, in terms of the depth of their thought and theconsequences of their ideas, are far superior to the chorus ofrationalists who emerged from the school of Maimonides.14

The historian Isaac Marcus Jost, a member of the Society for theCulture and Science of Judaism, who in his first book (Berlin, 1820-1828), expressed a negative, 'Enlightenment' approach towards theKabbalah rejecting the antiquity of the Zohar, changed his mind towardsthe end of his life. In his later work, Geschichte des Judentums undseiner Sekten (Leipzig, 1857-1859), Jost described the appearance ofthe Zohar as 'an important event in the history of religion'. While Jost

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13 See Tishby, ibid., p. 47 n. 217; Fenton, 'La cabbale et l'academie', pp. 211-222.A second edition of Joel's book was published in 1918.

14 'Überhaupt beabsichtige ich mit diesen "Beiträgen" mehr Interesse für ein Gebiethervorzurufen, das für die Geschichte der Philosophie und der Theologie vonhöchster Bedeutung ist … Die Kabbalisten zählen Manner in ihren Reihen, diewas Tiefe des Gedankens und Consequenz der Ideen betrifft, jene grosse ScharRationalisten überragt, die aus der Schule Mose ben Maimon's hervorgegangensind'; see A. Jellinek, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kabbalah, Leipzig 1852, pp.v-vi; and cf. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 49.

did not accept the antiquity of the Zohar, he nevertheless argued that

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one should not accuse its author or authors of forgery and that, despiteits late date, the Zohar incorporates early views. In his opinion, theZohar contains 'the soul of the Torah', and deep reflection upon it is avaluable counterweight to the 'dead letters' of the Talmudic tradition.15

A particularly positive approach to the Zohar was expressed byElijah Benamozegh, an Italian Jewish Maskil of North African origins,who devoted two entire books - Eimat Mafgi‘a (1854-1855) and Ta‘amLeshad (1863) to disproving the arguments against the antiquity of theZohar. The approach of Benamozegh, who wrote in Hebrew and evenpublished an edition of the Zohar, was closer to the traditional approachthan that of the scholars mentioned above. But Benamozegh was alsoinfluenced by romantic notions which shaped the positive view of theZohar during this period.16

III

While the criticism and de-canonization of the Zohar within maskiliccircles derived from the adoption of the values of the Enlightenmentand their imposition upon the Jewish tradition, the more positiveapproaches to the Kabbalah and the attempt to restore the Zohar to itscentral status were part of the romantic perspective adopted by manyEuropean Jews during the course of the 19th century. The RomanticMovement - or perhaps one should say, the romantic mood - emergedat the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, as acounter-reaction to modernity and as a critique of the values of theEnlightenment movement. Romanticism accepted the basic dichotomiesof the Enlightenment, which posed reason against emotion andimagination, rationalism against mysticism, the modern era against theMiddle Ages, and West against East. Contrary to Enlightenment,

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15 I. M. Jost, Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Secten, Leipzig 1857-1859,pp. 74-78. And see further: R. Michael, Y. M. Yost: Avi ha-Historiagraphiaha-Yehudit ha-Modernit, Jerusalem 1982, p. 192; idem., Ha-Ketivah ha-Historit,p. 273.

16 See Fenton, 'La cabbale et l'academie', pp. 224-225; M. Idel, Kabbalah: NewPerspectives, p. 283 n. 74.

Romanticism rejected the positive evaluation of reason and modernity


as representing the 'light', and affirmed specifically those 'dark' elementsthat had been rejected by the Enlightenment.

Within this perspective, emotion, imagination, mysticism, themedieval era, and the East, enjoyed a positive evaluation. Within thisframework, non-Jewish thinkers found interest in both Christian andJewish Kabbalah. The outstanding spokesman for this tendency wasthe German theosophist Franz Molitor, who was close to FriedrichSchelling and to Franz von Bader and who devoted his life to studyingJudaism and Kabbalah. His book, Philosophie der Geschichte oderüber Tradition, was published in four volumes between 1827 to 1853.

The Kabbalah and Zohar, rejected by the Jewish Maskilim asrepresenting the irrational, imaginary, emotional, medieval and Orientalaspects of Judaism, were reaffirmed by Jewish thinkers adopting theRomantic perspective, some of whom were familiar with and influencedby Molitor's positive approach towards the Kabbalah.17 Those Jewishthinkers who who were influenced by the Romantic spirit praised theimagination, emotion and mystical depth found in the Kabbalah andthe Zohar and emphasized their historical importance. Yet, thesethinkers' positive attitude was ambivalent. Thus, for example, AdolpheFranck writes of the Zohar:

In the modest form of a commentary on the Pentateuch, theZohar touches, with great independence, upon all the matters ofthe spirit, at times reaching heights that might impress even thestrongest intellects of our generation. However, only rarely doesit remain at these heights: quite frequently it descends to alanguage, to sentiments and ideas that betray ignorance and

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17 Concerning Molitor and his influence on Scholem, see: C. Schulte, '"DieBuchstaben haben … ihre Wurzeln oben", Scholem und Molitor', Kabbalah unddie Literature der Romantik, pp. 143-164.

18 'Sous la modeste forme d'un commentaire sur la Pentateuque, il touché, avec uneentiere independence, à toute les questions de l'ordre spiritual, et quelquefois ils'eleve à des doctrines dont la plus forte intelligence pourrati encore se glorifierde nos jours. Mais il est loin de se maintenir toujours à cette hauteur: tropsouvent il descend à un langage, à des sentiments et à des idées qui décelent ledernier degré d'ignorance et de superstition'; see Franck, La Kabbale, p. 94(English: Franck, The Kabbalah, p. 34).

superstition.18

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This ambivalence was substantive to the romantic perspective which,while opposing the values of the Enlightenment, largely operated withinthe same universe of discourse and adopted the basic paradigms ofmodernity. Primitive or oriental contents and traditions, which werevalued by the Romantics, were only considered positive insofar asthey remained within their own historical and geographicalframework - that is, outside of 19th century Europe. This standpoint isexpressed in a telling reaction on the part of Jellinek to Franck's remarkthat the Kabbalah is 'the heart and very lifeblood' of Judaism.19 Jellinekstated that, while this is true with regard to early Judaism up to theclosing of the Talmud, the Kabbalah is an alien element for contemporaryJudaism.20 Indeed, the majority of the above-cited Jewish thinkerswho devoted historical and philological studies to the Zohar emphasizedits historical, literary and metaphysical value, but did not act todisseminate the Zohar or to integrate Kabbalistic contents intocontemporary Jewish culture.

IV

Towards the end of the nineteenth century there was a renewedawakening of interest and admiration for the Kabbalah and the Zohar,and especially for Hasidism, this time not only among Western EuropeanJews, but also among certain circles from Eastern Europe. During thisperiod many intellectuals and writers - including Micha JosefBerdyczewski, Samuel Abba Horodezky, Martin Buber, ÓayyimNa man Bialik and Hillel Zeitlin - displayed admiration for Hasidism,Kabbalah and Zohar. It was against this background that GershomScholem, who was later to establish the study of Kabbalah as an

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19 'Or, il est impossible de considerer la Kabbale comme un fait isole, comme unaccident dans le Judaisme: elle en est au contraire la vie et la Coeur'; see Franck,La Kabbale, p. 382 (Franck, The Kabbalah , p. 219).

20 'Der Verfasser hätte hinzüfugen sollen "des Judenthums nach der Rückkehr ausder babyl. Gefangenschaft bis zum Abschlusse des Talmuds". Denn demgegenwärtigen Judenthume ist die Kabbalah ein äusseres, fremdes element'; seeA. Franck, Die Kabbalah, oder die Religions-Philosophie der Hebräer, übersetztvon A. Jellinek, Leipzig 1844, p. 283. Cf. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p.8.

academic discipline, also became engrossed in the Kabbalah. The interest


in Kabbalah and Zohar among Jewish intellectuals in both Westernand Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th

century took place within the framework of the neo-Romanticperspective of that period; the concern with mysticism, the occult andthe Orient (including Kabbalah),21 which characterized the fin de siècle,and the framework of Jewish nationalist, specifically Zionist, discoursedeveloped in close tandem with this neo-romantic spirit. Continuingthe tendency of Western European thinkers of the mid 19th century,these turn-of-the-century intellectuals emphasized the historical, literaryand metaphysical value of the Zohar as well as its historical importance.Some of the intellectuals during this period, who tended towards neo-Romantic occult and mystical approaches, stressed the metaphysicaland religious value of the Kabbalah and the Zohar, while othersemphasized their historical significance as a national heritage.Intellectuals of this period often combined a nascent Zionist-nationalistideology with their attraction towards mysticism and the occult. PaulMendes-Flohr's study, 'Fin-de-siècle Orientalism and the Aesthetics ofJewish Self-Affirmation', cites examples of this combination,particularly in the activity of Martin Buber.22 Alongside Buber onemight also mention Ernst Müller, who translated Zohar passages into

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21 The Kabbalah played an important role in spiritualistic, theosophic and occultmovements at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. On theinterest in Kabbalah among French occultists, see Fenton, 'La cabbale etl'academie', p. 26. On the great interest shown in Kabbalah by leaders of theOrder of the Golden Dawn, Arthur Waite and S. L. MacGregor Mathers, seebelow n. 54. On the interest in Kabbalah by the Russian religious philosopherand poet, Vladimir Soloviev, see J. Deutsch Kornablat, 'Solov'ëv's AndrogynousSophia and the Jewish Kabbalah', Slavic Review 50 (1991), pp. 487-496. OnSoloviev's familiarity with the writings of the French occult Kabbalist EliphasLevi, see ibid., p. 488 n. 4. On the attitude of the Jews towards Soloviev and hisinfluence on Jewish intellectuals and writers at the turn of the century, see H.Bar Yosef, 'The Jewish Reception of Vladimir Solov'ëv', in: W. van den Bercken,M. de Courton and E. van der Zweerde eds., Vladimir Solov'ëv: Reconciler andPolemicist, Leuven 2000, pp. 363-392; idem, Jewish Christian Relations in ModernHebrew and Yiddish Literature: A Preliminary Sketch, Cambridge 2000, pp.17-19.

22 P. Mendes-Flohr, 'Fin-de-siècle Orientalism and the Aesthetics of Jewish Self-Affirmation' [Hebrew], Me˙qerei Yerushalayim be-Ma˙shevet Yisrael 3 (1984),pp. 623-681.

German at the beginning of the 20th century (and later published a

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book in English about the history of Jewish mysticism), and was amember of the Zionist Student Union in Prague, and a devotee of theanthroposophic school of Rudolph Steiner.23 The combination ofZionism and mysticism within an Orientalist perspective was alsocharacteristic of Naphtali Herz Imber, author of the Zionist anthemHatikvah, who was interested in Kabbalah and who was close totheosophic and occult circles (even referring to Hasidim as 'Jewishtheosophists').24 The relationship between these two tendencies derivedfrom an Orientalist-Jewish perspective, which saw in both Zionismand in the turn towards mysticism and Kabbalah a return to the Orientalsources of Judaism.

Within this framework of a positive attitude toward Kabbalah andHasidism, the Zohar enjoyed a positive evaluation among various

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23 Müller's translations were published in the Journal Der Jude and at the end ofthe volume Von Judentum, the Association of Zionist Students in Prague, BarKochba, alongside translations by Hugo Bergman. See Von Judentum, Leipzig1913, pp. 281-284. In 1920 his book Der Sohar und Seine Lehre: Einleitung indie Gedankenwelt der Kabbalah (Wein-Berlin), was published. This was followedby an anthology of Zohar passages which he translated into German, Der Sohar:Das heilige Buch der Kabbala, nach dem Urtext herausgegeben von Ernst Müller(Wien, 1932). Later he published in English his History of Jewish Mysticism(1946),which was translated from the German by Maurice Simon, the Englishtranslator of the Zohar. On Müller and his involvement in Kabbalah and Zohar,see S. H. Bergman's introduction to E. Müller, Der Sohar und seine Lehre:Einführung in die Kabbalah, Zürich 1957, pp. 7-14; and J. Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin'sZohar, The History of a Translation and Commentary Project' [Hebrew], Kabbalah10 (2004), pp. 120-131, 147.

24 J. Kabakoff, Master of Hope, London 1985, p. 179. Imber was a protégé ofLawrence and Alice Oliphant, 'Christian Zionists', who were greatly interested inmysticism. During his years of wandering in the United States, Imber establishedcontact with theosophic and occultist circles in Boston and in Indianapolis,lectured on Kabbalah, established a journal on Kabbalistic matters entitled Uriel(of which only one issue was published, in 1895), and even attempted to create aKabbalistic circle, called 'The Inner Circle'. See Kabakoff, ibid., pp. 12-15.Kabakoff reprinted two passages from Imber's writings about the Kabbalah inUriel (ibid., pp. 178-181), including one in which Imber discusses his plans totranslate the Zohar into English (see below n. 35). Imber's Orientalist side standsout in his description of his travels 'to the ends of the East, eastward' (ibid., pp.39-74, 125-142), as well in his descriptions of his native Galicia: '… my nativeland of "Half-Asia" … is to Asia as its preface is to a book: it is the a, b, c, inwhich to prepare for the great Semitic college, Asia' (ibid., p. 32).

thinkers at the turn of the century. Romantic and expressive language


repeatedly appears in descriptions of the Zohar during this period.Thus, for example, the writer Mendele Mokher Seforim, in his Be-‘Emeqha-Bakha ('In the Valley of Suffering'; 1904), describes the Zohar asthe pillar of fire illuminating the darkness of the Middle Ages:

The Zohar is Sinai, the holy place, the mountain of God thatstrikes flames of the fire of love and sublime feelings of friendship.There heaven and earth unite in a lover's kiss of the sons of Godand the sons of man as they embrace, and all of them together,the denizens of above and the denizens of below, sing praises toGod with a sound of song and gratitude … The Zohar is thepillar of the fire of love which first appeared to the children ofIsrael in the darkness of the Middle Ages.25

Using similar language, but with greater emphasis on the religious andmystical value of the Zohar, Hillel Zeitlin began his essay, 'AnIntroduction to Sefer ha-Zohar', published in the periodical Ha-Tequfahin 1920, as follows:

What is the Zohar? It is a sublime Divine soul that suddenlydescended earthward from the World of Emanation, that it mightbe revealed to human eyes, with millions of lights and shadows,colors and varieties. The Holy One blessed be He took a preciousstone from his crown and threw it down to earth, the stone burstand scattered, sowing thousands upon thousands of lights,rejoicing and laughing in multitudes of hues and tones, whichcame from Eternity so as to brighten all of the dark corners andto satisfy whoever was thirsty and longed for the light, and toilluminate and warm whatever had been killed by the coldnessof science and the darkness of ignorance, the blindness andheaviness of nature, and the evil and difficulty and cruelty ofhuman beings. The Zohar was revealed to the people of Israeland to all the inhabitants of the earth through the influence ofpictures, parables, stories, epigrams, charming thoughts, the

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25 Mendele Mokher Seforim, ‘Emeq ha-Bakha, Tel Aviv 1957, pp. 87-88.

heights of heavens, the deepest depths, the glory of the stars, the

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speech of the mighty mountains, the converse of the eternaltrees, the valley of the bushes of the forest …26

Many thinkers and scholars at the beginning of the 20th century sawthe Zohar as representing the mystic, vital spirit of Judaism, in oppositionto halakhah and to philosophy. Thus, for example, Shimon Bernfeld,an Eastern European Maskil who was active in Berlin at the end of thenineteenth century, described the Zohar as follows in his book Da‘atElohim (Warsaw, 1899):

Over the course of time we have seen that no harm came toIsrael on account of the Zohar. To the contrary: it was extremelyhelpful in opening the fetters of Judaism, which had becomeclosed up by Aristotelian syllogisms and Talmudic pilpul[dialectics] … A book such as this is bone of our bones andflesh of our flesh. It is the fruit of the Israelite spirit, which hasnothing to be ashamed of in this work of its spirit.27

Like Bernfeld, who presents the Zohar as the 'fruit of the Israelitespirit', and sees therein a power freeing Judaism from the bonds ofboth philosophy and halakhah, Samuel Abba Horodezky, in his article'Kabbalah', published in the Hebrew periodical Netivot in Warsaw in1913, presented the Zohar as the living spirit of Judaism in exile, asopposed to 'fossilized' Rabbinism:

The Zohar vitalized Judaism; it breathed a new breath of lifeinto the letters and words of the Torah; it gave a living soul to

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26 H. Zeitlin, 'Introduction to Sefer ha-Zohar' [Hebrew], Ha-Tequfah 6 (1920), p.214. Similar expressive language appears in the words of S. Z. Setzer, 'Thebook-of-glory-and-of-foundation of esoteric doctrine, Sefer ha-Zohar is the greatand deep mystical sea whose waves rise to the heights of human imagination andbreak upon the high air of space into colorful fragments and tones of which theeye never has its fill'; see S. Z. Setzer, Ketavim Niv arim, Me˙qarim u-Masot,Tel Aviv 1966, p. 113.

27 S. Bernfeld, Da‘at Elohim, pp. 398-399. In a similar manner, Naphtali HerzImber presented the Zohar as opposed to the Rabbinic spirit in an article from1895: 'That book is in opposition to Rabbinical tradition; as it explains the lawsaccording to their esoteric meanings and spiritual solutions, which are in conflictwith the dim, dogmatic dead letter'. See Kabakoff, Master of Hope, p. 179.

the written word that had since time immemorial become


fossilized by Rabbinism. It added to it ever more holiness andspirituality … In the Zohar we hear the echo of the voice ofIsraelite prophecy. The Zohar is the prophecy of Galut , of Exile.The Zohar nurtured itself on the history of prophecy, of aggadah.It was deeper, more sublime, more mysterious, more religiousthan the aggadah … The Zohar is the central point in the spiritualand religious life of the people of Israel, and from there its lightspread round about.28

A similar position was expressed by the English Jewish scholar JoshuaAbelson, who wrote the introduction to the English translation of theZohar (1931), in which he described the Zohar in particular, and theKabbalah in general, as representing the mystical spirit that vitalizesRabbinic Judaism:

Indeed, herein may be said to lie the undying service whichCabbalism has rendered Judaism, whether as creed or as life. Atoo literal interpretation of the words of Scripture, giving Judaismthe appearance of being nothing more than an ordered legalism,an apotheosis of the 'letter which killeth', a formal and petrifiedsystem of external commands bereft of all spirit and denying allfreedom of the individual - these have been, and are still insome quarters, the blemishes and shortcomings cast in the teethof Rabbinic Judaism. The supreme rebutter of such taunts andobjections is Cabbalah. The arid field of Rabbinism was alwayskept well watered and fresh by the living streams of Cabbalisticlore.29

Within the context of this new admiration of the Kabbalistic tradition,there were again some who attempted to prove the antiquity of theKabbalah and the Zohar. Hillel Zeitlin attempted to do so in his Hebrew

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28 S. A. Horodezky, 'Kabbalah' [Hebrew], Netivot (1913), pp. 56-57. On Horodezky'swritings about Jewish mysticism, and the distinction he makes between 'Judaismof feeling' and 'Judaism of intellect', see Meir, Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar, p. 129.

29 H. Sperling, M. Simon and P. P. Lavertoff trans, The Zohar, vol. 1, London1931, p. xiv.

studies, 'The Antiquity of Esoteric Doctrine in Israel' and 'Introduction

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to Sefer ha-Zohar', published respectively in 1920 and 1921.30 In hisopinion, the Zohar originated in 'chapter headings' conveyed verballyby Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai and his disciples, was recorded and expandedat a much later period, and edited and given their present form by R.Moshe de Leon:

The development of the Zohar was thus as follows: Rabbi Simeonbar Yohai, his cohorts and disciples, conveyed certain 'chapterheadings' concerning the secrets of the Godhead to those whocame after them, in the vernacular … They subsequently wroteinterpretations of these 'chapter headings', unifying the bodyand the commentaries into a single entity, and they attempted towrite their commentaries in the same style as the chapter headings… Rabbi Moses [de Leon] gathered and assembled all of theabove-mentioned tractates with great devotion, but he was notmerely an anthologizer and editor, but also incorporated hisown spirit within them and brought down those holy and profoundideas which he found …31

Many other scholars of this period advocated the view that Sefer ha-Zohar, even if it was edited in the 13th century, was based upon earliersources. Thus, for example, in his Divrei Yemei ‘Am ‘Olam (Historyof the Jewish People), first printed in German (translated from theRussian by A. Steinberg) in 1927, Simon Dubnow argued the following:

One may assume that the composition of the Zohar, which is acollection of a series of separate mystical works, involvedmembers of various generations: mystics in the Land of Israeland in Babylonia during the period of Sefer YeΩirah; Spanishand Ashkenazi Kabbalists from the thirteenth and later centuriesthrough to the mid-sixteenth century, when the Zohar was printed

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30 H. Zeitlin, 'The Antiquity of Mysticism in Judaism' [Hebrew], Ha-Tequfah 5(1920), pp. 280-322; idem., 'Introduction to Sefer ha-Zohar' [Hebrew], Ha-Tequfah6 (1920), pp. 314-334; 7 (1920), pp. 353-368; 9 (1921), pp. 265-330 [reprintedin his Be-Pardes ha-Óasidut veha-Qabbalah, Tel Aviv 1960, pp. 53-102, 104-144].

31 Ibid., 7 (1920) 366-367 [reprinted in Be-Pardes ha-Óasidut veha-Qabbalah, pp.142-143].

for the first time, in Italy. Each of these participants enriched


the collection by additions, which were adapted to the ancientstyle of the book. It achieved its final and set form under theeditorship of Moses de Leon … The archaic style of the Zohar,which at times betrays real artistry, testifies, alongside its Aramaiclanguage and its midrashic structure, that the basic frameworkof the book originated in the Orient rather than in the West. Itmay be that Nahmanides, who leaned towards Kabbalah, foundin the Land of Israel remnants of ancient midrashim which hesent to Spain; the same is true of Abraham Abulafia, who alsotraveled in Eastern lands. These passages were certainlytransmitted from one individual to another within Kabbalisticcircles, until they were unified into one by Moses de Leon, whoedited them in the ancient Aramaic language and introduced thenew Kabbalistic ideas into the oldest text.32

A similar stance was expressed by Joshua Abelson, who in hisintroduction to the English translation of the Zohar wrote the following:

From the survey of the whole subject, one is drawn irresistiblyto the conclusion that the Zohar, far from being a homogeneouswork, is a compilation of a mass of material drawn from manystrata of Jewish and non Jewish mystical thought and coveringnumerous centuries.33

As we shall see below, Gershom Scholem was initially among thosewho opposed the attribution of Sefer ha-Zohar to R. Moses de Leon,and he entertained the possibility that it in fact includes ancient materials.

V

Within the framework of the renewed evaluation of Jewish mysticismand Zohar, various cultural agents of this period engaged in the activity

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32 See S. Dubnow, Die Geschichte des judischen Volkes in Europa, Band V, Berlin1927, p. 152. The translation is based upon the Hebrew reworking by BaruchKrupnik (Kro) of S. Dubnow, Divrei Yemei ‘Am ‘Olam, Tel Aviv 1955, vol. 3,p. 1100.

33 Sperling, Simon and Lavertoff, Zohar, vol. 1, p. xi.

of enhancing the Jewish public's knowledge of the Zohar, incorporating

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it into Jewish culture, particularly through means of anthologies ofZohar passages translated into Hebrew, Yiddish, German and English.34

Naphtali Herz Imber - who reported an 1893 plan by the Reform rabbiSolomon Schindler and the president of the Theosophic Society inBoston to set up a society to enable him to undertake his own translationof the Zohar35 - included passages from the Zohar in his book, Treasuresof Two Worlds (Los Angeles, 1910).36 The volume Von Judentum(1913), published by the Zionist Student Federation of Prague, BarKochba, included translations from the Zohar into German by HugoBergmann and Ernst Müller.37 Concurrently, the latter publishedadditional translations in the periodical Der Jude, while in 1920 hisbook Der Sohar und seine Lehre was published in Berlin and in Vienna.38

Another anthology of Zohar passages translated into German waspublished in Berlin by J. Seidman Aus dem heiligen Buch Sohar desRabbi Schimon ben Yochai,39 while in Warsaw a Hebrew anthology,Aggadot ha-Zohar, was published by Azriel Nathan Frenk.40 During

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34 One should note that even prior to this, during the first half of the 19th century,Rabbi Eliakim Milzahagi translated the Zohar into Hebrew, a translation whichhas been lost. See I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 102. Fragments ofZohar passages translated into French were also included in the book of MichelWeill, the first French Chief Rabbi of Algerian Jewry, in his, La Morale duJudaisme, Paris 1875-1877, vol. 2, pp. 60-141. See Fenton, La cabale et l'academie,p. 223.

35 Thus Imber relates in his article in the periodical Uriel from the year 1895. SeeKabakoff, Master of Hope, p. 181, and cf. ibid., p. 16.

36 Treasures of Two Worlds: Unpublished Legends and Traditions of the JewishNation, Los Angeles 1910.

37 Von Judentum, Leipzig 1913, pp. 274-284.38 See above, n. 23.39 Scholem wrote a review of this anthology entitled 'Über die jüngste Sohar-

Anthologie', Der Jude 5 (1922), pp. 363-369, in which he accused Seidman oftranslating the Zohar into the language of German expressionism. See D. D.Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah and Counter-History, Cambridge, MA 1979,p. 73; A. B. Kilcher, 'Figuren des Endes: Historie und Aktualität der Kabbalahbei Gershom Scholem', in: S. Moses and S. Weigel eds., Gershom Scholem:Literature und Rhetorik, Köln 2000, pp. 170-171.

40 Sefer Aggadot ha-Zohar, 2 vols., Warsaw, 1923-1924; and cf. Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin'sZohar' (above, n. 23), p. 146 n. 106.

those same years Shmuel Zvi Setzer published translations of certain


Zohar passages into Yiddish, and at a later date translated some intoHebrew.41 The second part of Hillel Zeitlin's 'Introduction to Seferha-Zohar', published in 1921, consists of an anthology of explicatedZohar passages organized by different subjects ('the Human Body','the Human Soul', 'Worlds', 'Godhead', etc.; in many respects this workanticipates the great anthology by Isaiah Tishby and Fishel Lachower,Mishnat ha-Zohar, first published in 1949).42 In 1922 Bialik, as part ofthe plans of the Devir Publishing House, proposed a far-reaching planfor publishing various Kabbalistic works, including Sefer ha-Zohartogether with the Zohar Óadash and the Tiqqunim, 'with an introductionand a translation of the Aramaic sections and explanation of the difficultwords'.43 Around the same time, Hillel Zeitlin launched a project for atranslation of the Zohar into Hebrew, under the auspices of AyanotPublishers, who according to Simon Rawidowicz, the initiator of theidea of translating the Zohar, saw this venture as 'a unique sort ofnational obligation'.44 This project did not take off, and only a translationof Zeitlin's 'Introduction to the Sefer ha-Zohar' was published, after hedied in the Holocaust.45 Zeitlin himself composed works in a kind of

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41 Setzer's translation of the Zohar was published under the heading 'Fon Zohar' inthe periodical Das Wort, vols. 1-4, between 1921 and 1924. Zohar passagestranslated into Hebrew were published by Setzer in 1947 in Sefer ha-Shanahle-Yehudei Amerika and in the periodical Ha-Do’ar, 1954, nos. 24-25, 38-39.These translations were reprinted after his death in a collection Ketavim Niv˙arim:Me˙qarim u-Masot, Tel Aviv 1966, pp. 17-110, and cf. Meir, 'Hillel Zeitelin'sZohar', pp. 138-139 n. 80. Meir also notes there J. D. Eisenstein's program topublish a book entitled OΩar ha-Qabbalah, which was intended to include passagesfrom Sefer ha-Zohar and a 'Zoharic dictionary'.

42 See below, n. 53.43 See Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar', p. 124. Even before that, in 1913, Bialik

suggested translating Kabbalistic writings from Aramaic into Hebrew within theframework of his anthologizing project; see Meir, ibid.

44 Ha-MeΩudah 1 (1943), p. 36; and cf. Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar', p. 130. Onthis translation project and its history, see in extenso in Meir's above-mentionedpaper.

45 Ha-MeΩudah 1 (1943), pp. 40-81 [reprinted in his Be-Pardes ha-Óasidut veha-Qabbalah, Tel Aviv 1960, pp. 229-279].

Zoharic language, printed at the beginning of his, Sifran shel Yi idim

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('The Book of the Singular Ones').46 During the 1930s an Englishtranslation of the Zohar appeared in five volumes by Paul Lavertoff,Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon.47

Traditional circles were also active in translating and disseminatingthe Zohar during this period, no doubt in response to the revival ofinterest in the Zohar among enlightened and Zionist circles. At thebeginning of the 20th century in Warsaw, R. Yudel Rosenberg launcheda project of translating and editing the Zohar in Hebrew, a task whichhe worked on for many years in Warsaw, Lodz and Montreal. The firstvolume of this translation was published in Warsaw in 1906, under thetitle Sefer Sha‘arei Zohar Torah; a full translation was published later,titled Sefer Zohar Torah ‘al Óamisha Óumshei Torah (1924–1930).48

One should also note the publication of a 16th century Hebrew translationof the first section of Sefer ha-Zohar (Parshat Bereshit), by R. OvadiahHadayah, the head of Yeshivat ha-Mekubalim Beth-El, in 1946. Ashas recently been shown by Jonathan Meir, the publisher Bendit Cohen

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46 Sifran shel Yi idim, Ketavim MekubaΩim, pp. 9-16.

47 Sperling, Simon and Lavertoff, The Zohar. The introduction to this translationwas written by the scholar Joshua Abelson.

48 Y. Y. Rosenberg, Sefer Sha‘arei Zohar Torah, Warsaw 1906; one volume onSefer Bereshit; Sefer Zohar Torah al Óamishah Óumshei Torah: vols. 1-2,Montreal 1924; vols. 3-5, New York 1924-25); Ha-Zohar ha-Qadosh, Bilgoraj1929-1930. Rosenberg also published books about the heroes of Sefer ha-Zohar,in Hebrew and Yiddish, Nifla’ot ha-Zohar, Montreal 1927. On Rosenberg'stranslations of the Zohar, see in detail Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar', p. 145 n.104. Rosenberg's project of translating and editing the Zohar is discussed indetail in Chapter Four of the forthcoming book of Ira Robinson, A Kabbalist inMontreal: The Life and Times of Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg. I thank ProfessorRobinson for making the manuscript of this chapter available to me. Rosenberg(who attempted to establish himself as a ˙asidic rebbe during his stay in Lodz)acted within a traditional framework, justified his translation project by traditionalmessianic arguments, and introduced his volume with the haskamot (imprimatur)of various rabbis. Rosenberg was also acquainted with Haskalah literature andeven sent a copy of his book to A. A. Harkavi, Head of the Department ofJewish Literature and Oriental Manuscripts at the St. Petersburg library, askingfor his help in the translation of various terms into Hebrew. On the attitude ofRosenberg and his sons to contemporary secular culture, see I. Robinson, 'TheTarler Rebbe of Lodz and his Medical Practice', Polin 11 (1998), p. 55.

had planned to issue this translation earlier, under the rubric of the


Yalkut Publishing House of Berlin.49 R. Yehuda Ashlag began histranslation of Sefer ha-Zohar into Hebrew during the 1940s, anundertaking only completed close to his death, in 1954.50

As we shall see below, the Scholem school of Kabbalah researchexpressed little interest in the dissemination of the Zohar and itsincorporation into contemporary culture. This notwithstanding, Scholemhimself published a small selection of Zohar passages translated intoEnglish, in 1949.51 During that same year the first volume of Mishnatha-Zohar, a comprehensive anthology of Zohar passages translatedinto Hebrew with explications, together with comprehensiveintroductions about the Zohar and various central themes thereof, waspublished by Mossad Bialik. This project, conceived by S. A. Horodetskyand Fishel Lachower,52 was carried out by Lachower and Isaiah Tishby(who completed most of the work after Lachower's death).53

As part of the interest in mysticism and the occult at the end of the19th and beginning of the 20th century, non-Jewish occult circles likewiseengaged in the translation and dissemination of the Zohar. As mentionedearlier, Naphtali Herz Imber was asked to translate the Zohar for theBoston Theosophic Society. In 1887 an English rendition of chaptersof the Zohar from Knorr von Rosenroth's Kabbalah Denudata waspublished for the first time, by Samuel Liddel Macgregor Mathers, amember of the Theosophical Society and the founder of the Order of

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49 See Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar', p. 150 n. 127. On the activity of Bendit Cohenand Yalkut Publishers, see ibid., 148-149 n. 120. The translation, Sefer ha-Zoharha-Shalem ‘al ha-Torah (Jerusalem 1946), was attributed by Hadayah to R.Berechiel; see Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 125 n. 604.

50 See E. M. Gottlieb, Ha-Sulam, Jerusalem 1997, pp. 162-169.51 Zohar, the Book of Splendor, New York 1949). Even before that time, Scholem

had translated the beginning of Parshat Bereshit of the Zohar into German: G.Scholem, Die Geheimnisse der Schöpfung, Berlin 1935.

52 F. Lachower's translation of the 'Bird's Nest' passage in Zohar Shemot waspublished earlier, in Sa‘ar, Tel Aviv 1943, pp. 3-8.

53 See Z. Gries, 'On Isaiah Tishby's Contribution to the Study of the Zohar and thePolemic Around the Zohar and its Acceptance in the Public' [Hebrew], Masa(Literary Supplement to Davar, 22 Kislev 5755 = 25 November 1994), p. 21;Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar', pp. 154-155.

54 S. Liddel Macgregor Mathers, The Kabbalah Unveiled, London 1887 (further

the Golden Dawn.54 In 1894, a translation of the Idra Rabba, based on

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the Kabbalah Denudata, was made by the French occultist EliphasLevi (the pseudonym of Alphonse Louis Constant) and published underthe title Le Livre des Splendeurs. A year later, in 1895, a Frenchedition of Kabbalah Denudata translated by Henrie Chateau appearedwith an introduction by the French occultist Papus (a pseudonym forthe physician Gerard Encausse), who also wrote the postscript forLevi's translation.55 Similarly, at the beginning of the 20th century,between the years 1905 and 1911, the Zohar was translated into Frenchby Jean de Pauly, an enigmatic figure who claimed to be an Albaniannobleman but was evidently an apostate Jew.56

VI

Like the 19th century scholars who called for a renewed evaluation ofthe Zohar from a romantic perspective, so too the Jewish thinkers who

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editions appeared in 1897 and 1909). Interestingly, in the same year a translationof the Idra Zuta (The Lesser Holy Assembly) into Judaic-Arabic was publishedin Poona, India, by Abraham David Ezekiel. The term 'the lesser Holy Assembly'was used also by Mathers to translate 'Idra Zuta'. This is no coincidence. As Ihope to show in my forthcoming study of Zohar translations (to be published inTe‘uda), Ezekiel was also a member of the Theosophical Society. Another leaderof the Order of the Golden Dawn, Arthur Edward Waite, devoted to the Zohar avolume entitled The Secret Doctrine in Israel; A Study of the Zohar and itsConnections, London 1913.

55 E. Levi, Livre des splendeurs, Paris 1894; H. Chateau, Le Zohar, La kabbaledevoilee, Paris 1895.

56 Sepher Ha-Zohar (le Livre de La Splendeur), Doctrine Esoterique des Israelites,traduit pour la premiere fois sur le texte chaldaique et accompagne de notes parJean De Pauly, ouvre posthume entierment revue corrigee et complete, publiéepar les soins de Emile Lafuma-Giraud, vol 1-6, Paris 1906-1912. On this book,its author, who was probably none other than the apostate Paul Meyer, and thenumerous Christological forgeries therein, see G. Scholem, Me-Berlin le-Yerushalayim, Tel Aviv 1982, pp. 132-133; Fenton, La cabbale et l'academie, p.229. D. Bourel, 'Notes sur la premiere traduction française du Zohar', in: J.Mattern, G. Motzkin and S. Sandbank eds., Jüdisches Denken in einer Welt ohneGott, Festschrift fur Stephane Moses, Berlin 2001, pp. 120-129. A translation ofSifra de-Ûeni‘uta into French, based upon de Pauly's translation, was publishedby Paul Vulliaud, Traduction integrale du Siphra di-Tzeniuta, le livre du secret,Paris 1930, who at the beginning of his career was close to the occultist circle ofSar Josephin Peledan, and later to Mircea Eliade. In his book, Le Kabbale Juive,Histoire et Doctrine, Paris 1923, Vulliaud argued the antiquity of Sefer ha-Zohar.

were active in calling for the re-canonization of the Zohar at the


beginning of the 20th century, expressed an ambivalent attitude towardsthe Kabbalah in general and the Zohar in particular. Most of the thinkersdiscussed above, who expressed an interest in Jewish mysticism, founda metaphysical, literary and historical value in the Kabbalah, but acceptedneither its authority nor its holiness (an exception to this was HillelZeitlin who, as noted, called for a far deeper commitment to theKabbalah).

However, alongside their enthusiasm for and positive evaluation ofthe Kabbalah, certain thinkers also expressed a reservation and evenrevulsion toward the Zohar and other Kabbalistic writings. Thus, inhis paper 'Jewish Mysticism', which introduced his book, The Tales ofRabbi Nachman, first published in 1906, Martin Buber wrote thefollowing:

If in fact the power of Jewish mysticism derives from a basiccharacteristic of the people who created it, then over the courseof time the destiny of the people was imprinted upon it. Itswanderings and its sufferings repeatedly engendered the samemovements of despair within the Jewish soul, from which attimes there in turn emerged a certain flash of ecstasy, butsimultaneously prevented its flowering into the full fruit ofecstasy. They dragged it in such a way that that which wasessential and vital became intertwined with that which wassuperfluous and random. Because they felt that the pain preventedthem from saying what they needed to, they chattered on aboutsubjects which were foreign to it. In this way such writings asSefer ha-Zohar, which elicit both admiration and disgust, werecreated. Between clumsy anthropomorphisms, whose allegoricalinterpretation do not make them any more tolerable, and pointlessand colorless discussions, that limp along in vague and rhetoricallanguage, over and over again there shine through glimpses ofthe hidden depths of the souls and revelation of the secrets of

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57 'Kommt demnach die kraft der Jüdischen Mystik aus einer ursprünglichenEigenschaft des Volkes, das sie erzeugt hat, so hat sich ihr des weiteren auch dasSchicksal dieses Volkes eingeprägt. Das Wanderen und das Martyrium der Juden

the infinite..57

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Buber was not the only one to express an ambivalent attitude towardsthe Zohar. Simon Dubnow, for example, referred to the Zohar as 'aremarkable book … a mixture of metaphysics and illusions'.58 JoshuaAbelson called the Zohar 'a veritable storehouse of anachronisms,incongruities and surprises'.59 Even in the words of Hillel Zeitlin, whoactively worked for a religious renewal of Kabbalah, one finds a noteof ambivalence in the description of the Zohar. Further on in theintroductory section of his 'Introduction to Sefer ha-Zohar', quotedearlier, he writes the following:

The Zohar - a mélange of the deepest truths and of imaginings;of straight and crooked lines; of straightforward ways andserpentine paths; of clear, whole and suitable images, and strangeand alien pictures; the power of the lion and the tenderness of achild; the voice of a waterfall and the whispering of a spring;dark wells and hidden caves - in brief: the clarity and sharpness

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haben ihre Seelen immer wieder in die Schwingungen der letzten Verzweiflungversetzt, aus denen so leicht der Blitz der Ekstase erwacht. Zugleich aber habensie sie gehindert, den reinen Aussdruck der Ekstase auszubauen, und sie verleitet,Notwendiges, Erlebtes mit Überflussigem, Aufgeklaubtem durchein-anderzuwerfen, und in dem Gefühle, das Eigene vor Pein nicht sagen zu können,am Fremden geschwätzig zu warden. So sind Schriften wie der "Sohar", dasbuch des Glanzes, entstanden, die ein Entzücken und ein Abscheu sind. Mittenunter rohen Anthropomorphismen, die durch die allegorische Ausdeutung nichterträglicher werden, mitten unter öden und fablosen Spekulationen, die in einerverdunkelten gespreizten Sprache einherstelzen, leuchten wieder und wiederBlicke der verschwiegenen Seelentiefen und Offenbarungen der letztenGeheimnisse auf'; see M. Buber, Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman , Leipzig1920, p. 8. This passage appears (in Hebrew), apart from the last sentence, inScholem's article, 'Martin Buber's Approach to Judaism', in his ‘Od Davar:Pirqei Morashah u-Te iyah, A. Shapira ed., Tel Aviv 1990, vol. 1, p. 381. Asobserved by Scholem (op. cit., n. 28), in the reprinting of these words in Buber'scollected writings significant changes were introduced. From the translation intoEnglish, as well, the harsher expressions about the Zohar were removed. See M.Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, New York 1956, p. 5.

58 '… dieses seltsame Buch … ein Gemisch von Metaphysik und mystischenWahnideen'; see S. Dubnow, Weltgeschichte des jüdischen Volkes, Berlin 1927,vol. 5, p. 151; cf. S. Dubnow, Divrei Yemei ‘Am ‘Olam, Tel Aviv 1955, vol. 3,p. 1099.

59 Sperling, Simon and Lavertoff, The Zohar, vol. 1, p. xii.

of age-old wisdom together with long-winded and endless


discussions interweave and mix with one another as in a longand complex dream … According to its contents and richness,the Zohar is entirely Divine; in terms of its exterior, at timesconfusion and cloudiness.60

VII

As stated earlier, the scholarly perspective of Gershom Scholem, whobecame the leading authority in the study of Jewish mysticism duringthe second half of the 20th century and who established Kabbalahresearch as an academic discipline, took shape within the frameworkof the neo-Romantic, nationalist and Orientalist perspective.61

Notwithstanding Scholem's disclaimers regarding the assertion that hewas led to engage in Kabbalah by the neo-romantic spirit,62 he did notdeny the profound impression left on him by Buber's writings aboutHasidism. In his autobiography, From Berlin to Jerusalem, he complainsthat 'a certain function was played' in his interest in the Kabbalah 'by

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60 H. Zeitlin, 'Introduction to Sefer ha-Zohar' [Hebrew], Ha-Tequfah 6 (1920), p.214.

61 On the Orientalist perspective of Scholem's Kabbalah research, see G. Anijar,'Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable: On Orienting Kabbalah Studiesand the Zohar of Christian Spain', Jewish Social Studies 3 (1996), pp. 96, 114-118;D. Biale, 'Shabbtai Zevi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism' [Hebrew], in:R. Elior ed., Ha-Óalom ve-Shivro: Ha-Tenu‘ah ha-Shabta’it u-Shelu˙oteha:Meshi iyut, Shabta’ut u-Frankism, Jerusalem 2001, vol. 2, pp. 107-110; A. Raz-Krakotzkin, 'Orientalism, Jewish Studies and Israeli Society' [Hebrew], Jema‘a3 (1999), pp. 49-52; idem., 'Between "Brit Shalom" and the Temple: Redemptionand Messianism in Zionist Discourse through the Writings of Gershom Scholem'[Hebrew], Theory and Criticism 20 (2002), pp. 87-112 (esp. pp. 100-108); B.Huss, 'Ask No Question, Gershom Scholem and the Study of ContemporaryJewish Mysticism', Modern Judaism 25 (2005), pp. 146-148; A. Elqayam, 'TheHorizon of Reason, The Divine Madness of Sabbatai Sevi', Kabbalah 9 (2003),pp. 41, 43-48.

62 'It seems to me - without any proof of this - that there was something hiddenthere that attracted me. One could say, of course, that this "something" was nomore than the Romantic spirit that dominated me and which I brought into myapproach, or one can say this explanation is childish and was influenced by thewidespread fashion today in such explanations. I cannot decide, and who knowsthe ways of the spirit? (certainly not the Marxists of the various sects)'; seeScholem, Mi-Berlin li-Yerushalayim , Tel Aviv 1982, p. 126.

the impression left upon me by Buber's first two books on Hasidism,

Boaz Huss

written in the best of the Viennese Jugendstil style, painting this areain a romantic glow'.63 The works of Hillel Zeitlin also made a greatimpression upon the young Scholem, who in 1916 went as far astranslating Zeitlin's article, 'Shekhinah', into German.64 During thosesame years, while staying in Berne, Scholem also read Horodezky'sHebrew writings on Hasidism, and even met with him.65

Gershom Scholem's turn towards Kabbalah study was related tothe Zionist ideology which he had adopted as a youth in Germany. Ina 1974 interview with Muki Tzur, Scholem said:

I wanted to enter into the world of the Kabbalah via my thinkingand belief in Zionism as a living thing, as the renewal of apeople who had greatly degenerated … I was interested in thequestion: did the Judaism of halakhah have sufficient strength topersist and to exist? Was halakhah really possible without amystical basis? Does it have a vitality of its own to persistwithout degeneration over a period of thousands of years?66

Like other thinkers who dealt with Hasidism and Kabbalah at the endof the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Scholem saw Jewish

228

63 Ibid., p. 126.64 Ibid., p. 127; idem., ‘Od Davar, pp. 45-46; idem., On the Mystical Shape of the

Godhead, New York 1991, pp. 193, 300 n. 104; Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar', p.132.

65 Ibid., p. 127. Scholem relates that he even began, at Horodezky's request, thetranslation into German of the manuscript of his Hebrew book entitled ZeramimDatiyim ba-Yahadut. Despite Scholem's disdain for theosophic and occultistcircles (Huss, 'Ask No Questions', p. 148), Scholem met with the occult circle ofOscar Goldberg between the years 1921 and 1923. See Scholem, ibid., pp.174-178; idem., Walter Binyamin, Tel Aviv 1987, pp. 98-100. During that sameperiod Scholem was also in close contact with the converted Jewish scholar ofreligions, Robert Eisler, who expressed interest in Kabbalah and established the'Johann Albert Widmannstetter Society for Kabbalah Research' under whoseaegis Scholem published his first books: Das Buch Bahir, Leipzig 1923;Bibliographia Kabbalistica, Leipzig 1927. On the colorful figure of Eisler andScholem's connection with him, see Scholem, Mi-Berlin li-Yerushalayim, pp.149-155. Through Eisler's intermediacy, Scholem met with the author of mysticliterature, Gustav Meyrink; see ibid., pp. 156-158.

66 Scholem Devarim Be-go, pp. 26-27.

mysticism as the vital, life-giving force within Judaism, as opposed to


the fossilized and degenerate force of Rabbinic Judaism. In the wordsof Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin:

Scholem saw the mystic element as the vital, revolutionary onewithin Jewish history; the element that incorporated its essenceand facilitated its dynamic and watchful existence. This waswhat made its dialectical development possible and preventedJudaism, according to his argument, from sinking into thedegeneracy to which it would have sunk had the only forcesacting within it been those of Rabbinism. Kabbalah, accordingto Scholem, is the element in which true Jewish continuity isrevealed … The Kabbalah symbolizes the historical continuitywhose contact with the 'external' culture is superficial, thus nottouching upon its substantive layers. This, despite the fact thatthe concepts by which he himself breathed life into the hiddentexts, were clearly those of European romantic culture. The historyof the mystical stream, the hidden history, was transformed byScholem into the true history of Judaism, whose revitalization isthe condition for the national and spiritual renewal of the peopleas he saw it.67

But even though the neo-romantic tendencies influenced Scholem'sturn towards the study of Kabbalah, already at the beginning of hispath Scholem took exception to the neo-romantic enthusiasm overJewish mysticism and to the attempts to describe the Kabbalah in theterminology of German expressionism.68 Scholem rejected theapproaches of Buber, Zeitlin and Horodezky as unhistorical and

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67 A. Raz-Krakotzkin, 'The National Narration of Exile: Zionist Historiography andMedieval Jewry' [Hebrew], Ph.D. Dissertation, Tel Aviv University (1996), p.129.

68 Biale, Kabbalah and Counter-History, pp. 73-74, 88.69 On Scholem's criticism of Buber, and especially of his understanding of Hasidism,

see Scholem, 'Martin Buber's Interpretation of Hasidism', in his The MessianicIdea in Judaism, New York 1971, pp. 227-250 [originally in Commentary 32(1961), pp. 305-316]; idem., ‘Od Davar, pp. 363-413 (see especially his commentson p. 402, on Buber's inability to implement a scientific approach to Hasidism).Cf. Kilcher, 'Figuren des Endes: Historie und Aktualität der Kabbalah bei GershomScholem' (above, n. 39), pp. 170-171; R. Margolin, The Human Temple: Religious

sentimental;69 against them he posited strict philological-historical

Boaz Huss

research as being the only legitimate path towards unraveling thesignificance of the Kabbalah. Scholem saw philological research asthe only way to arrive at the metaphysical and mystical depths of theKabbalistic texts. In this respect, Scholem's research may be regardedas a synthesis of the historical-philological approach of the 19th centuryschool of Wissenschaft des Judentums and the romantic-nationalistapproaches of the fin-de-siècle. Scholem elucidated this approach tothe study of Kabbalah in a letter to Zalman Schocken written in 1937,'A Candid Letter About my True Intentions in Studying Kabbalah', asfollows:

It may, of course, be that fundamentally history is no more thanan illusion. However, without this illusion it is impossible topenetrate through temporal reality to the essence of the thingsthemselves. Through the unique perspective of philologicalcriticism, there has been reflected to contemporary men for thefirst time, in the neatest possible way, that mystical totality oftruth (des Systems) whose existence disappears specificallybecause of its being thrust upon historical time.70

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Interiorization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism [Hebrew],Jerusalem 2005, pp. 28-32. In a letter to Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer (in wake ofthe publication of her article, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Path To Jewish Mysticism' [Hebrew],Kivvunim 3 [1979], pp. 81-91), Scholem speaks of the great impression made onhim in his youth by Zeitlin's writings, but asserts that, 'I could not accept thethings he wrote about Kabbalah in Ha-Tequfah because of the total lack of anyhistorical sense therein'. See Yedi‘ot Genazim, vol. 8, Year 14: No. 104-105(1983), pp. 345-346; and cf. Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar', p. 136 n. 68. In hispaper on the Shekhinah, Scholem describes Zeitlin's essay on the Shekhinah(about which, as mentioned, he was very enthusiastic in his youth, and eventranslated it into German) as 'rather weak and sentimental' (op. cit.). In hisautobiography, Scholem states that, after he began translating Horodezky's book,he realized that 'not everything was as it should be in these chapters, and theauthor was swept up in a path of uncritical praise without much understanding'.Scholem also attacks, in far more vociferous manner, theosophical and occultistapproaches to Kabbalah. See Kilcher, 'Figuren des Endes', pp. 162-168; Huss,'Ask No Questions', p. 156, n. 40.

70 Scholem, ‘Od Davar, pp. 30-31 [On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in ourTime and Other Essays, Philadelphia 1997, p. 5]. Cf. Biale, Kabbalah and Counter-History, p. 76. Biale suggests there (p. 74), a similar position to that expressedby Scholem in his critique of Meir Weiner's book in 1922.

Scholem's approach to Sefer ha-Zohar was thus shaped by the neo-


Romantic perspective, by Zionist ideology and by the use of philological-historical research methods. In the famous lecture he gave at the Institutefor Jewish Studies in 1925 (14 Heshvan 5686), Scholem, usingphilological and historical arguments, opposed the attribution of theZohar to R. Moses de Leon, thereby attempting to free the Zohar ofthe accusation of being a forgery and to point towards the possibilitythat it indeed includes ancient materials:

Thus, at the conclusion of our investigations and research - afteran evaluation of the testimony of Rabbi Isaac of Acre and anoverview of the relationship of the literary work of R. Moses[de Leon] to the Zohar - the theories viewing Moses de Leon asthe author of Sefer ha-Zohar are seen to be flighty and non-existing(or, to be more precise: one may assume that they are nonexistent) in light of the facts. … We may say with confidencethat we have no positive evidence to accuse R. Moses of forgery.This being the case, all of the questions about the origins of theZohar, its editing and arrangement, and R. Moses de Leon's truerelation to it, are reopened. Yet, in order to give a positiveanswer to these questions and to state how and when the Zoharcame into being and was arranged, whether R. Moses de Leonmay have arranged certain midrashic sources which were availableto him from some unknown eras in a new manner, and whetherin the process of editing he added a dimension of his own, andhow these remnants from earlier generations came down to R.Moses and his predecessors among the Kabbalists of Castile -all these queries must await a new and systematic study of the

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71 G. Scholem, 'Did Moses de Leon Write Sefer ha-Zohar?' [Hebrew], Mada‘eiha-Yahadut 1 (1926), pp. 28-29; and cf. Biale, Kabbalah and Counter-History,pp. 117-118. Some of the arguments brought by Scholem against the attributionof the Zohar to de Leon were already raised by David Luria in Ma’amar Qadmutha-Zohar and by Zeitlin (who relied upon David Luria) in his 'Introduction toSefer ha-Zohar'; but see Scholem's critique of both David Luria and Zeitlin,ibid., pp. 24-25 n. 32. Zeitlin, on the other hand, in a 1933 letter to Z. Z.Weinberg argues that Scholem took his own arguments from his article. SeeMeir, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar', pp. 135-136 n. 68.

development of Kabbalah as a whole.71

Boaz Huss

During the course of his research, Scholem changed his mind and to alarge extent came to accept Graetz's view, according to which Seferha-Zohar was written at the end of the 13th century by R. Moses deLeon.72 Scholem articulated this position in great detail in the first oftwo chapters he devoted to the subject of the Zohar in his classicwork, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, first published in 1941 andbased upon lectures he had given at the Jewish Theological Seminaryin 1938.73 Although Scholem, unlike Graetz (and other scholars of theHaskalah school), accepted the late dating of Sefer ha-Zohar and itsattribution to R. Moses de Leon, this did not for him taint the value ofthe Zohar, which he described as one of the most significant books inJewish literature and in mystical literature generally. Scholem concludedthe chapter dealing with the Zohar and its author with the followingwords:

Pseudo-epigraphy is far removed from forgery. … The Questfor Truth knows of adventures that are all its own, and in a vastnumber of cases has arrayed itself in pseudo-epigraphic garb.The further a man progresses along his own road in this Questfor Truth, the more he might become convinced that his ownroad must have already been trodden by others, ages beforehim. To the streak of adventurousness which was in Moses deLeon, no less than to his genius, we owe one of the most remarkableworks of Jewish literature and of the literature of mysticism ingeneral.74

According to Scholem, not only does the pseudo-epigraphic style ofwriting not negate or reduce the value of the Zohar, it is itself alegitimate part of the 'adventure' of seeking the truth. As has beenargued by David Biale:

Scholem then accepted Graetz's accusation of pseudo-epigraphy,

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72 David Biale notes that Scholem first expresses this position in his translation ofthe Introduction to the Zohar into German, in 1935. See Kabbalah and Counter-History, pp. 118, 266 n. 19.

73 G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York 1988, pp. 156-204.74 Ibid., p. 204.

but made it a virtue, since pseudo-epigraphy became a means


for legitimizing a creative work as part of a hidden tradition.The authority of tradition is recognized, but the freedom ofliterary creation is preserved.75

Yet, despite his renewed respect for Sefer ha-Zohar (the only subjectto which two chapters in Major Trends were devoted) and the 'genius'of its author, Scholem shares in the ambivalence regarding the Zoharwhich, as we have seen, characterized the approach of many modernistthinkers to Jewish mysticism. Scholem's ambivalence in relation to theZohar finds its expression in his words regarding the presence ofprimitive ways of thought and feeling in the Zohar, alongside profoundcontemplative mysticism. Scholem argues that like in many othermystics, in the personality of the author of the Zohar naïve and profoundmodes of thinking are fused:

... the author's spiritual life is centered as it were in a morearchaic layer of the mind. Again and again one is struck by thesimultaneous presence of crudely primitive modes of thoughtand feeling, and of ideas whose profound contemplative mysticismis transparent. … a very remarkable personality in whom, as inso many mystics, profound and naive modes of thought existedside by side.76

In his introduction to Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Scholemuses a type of language very close to that employed by Martin Buberin the introduction to the Tales of Rabbi Nachman of Braslav.77 Likehim, he speaks of the 'admiration and disgust' aroused by the writingsof the Kabbalists:

It would be idle to deny that Kabbalistic thought lost much ofits magnificence where it was forced to descend from the pinnaclesof theoretical speculation to the plane of ordinary thinking and

233

75 Biale, Kabbalah and Counter History, p. 119.76 Scholem, Major Trends, p. 175. Cf. Anijar, 'Jewish Mysticism Alterable and

Unalterable' (above, n. 61), pp. 90, 117; Raz-Krakotzkin, 'Between "Brit Shalom"and the Temple' (above, n. 61), p. 100; Huss, 'Ask No Questions', p. 154. n. 29.

77 Ron Margolin noted that, in Buber's introduction to the Tales of Rabbi Nachman,he sketches the scheme according to which Scholem wrote his book, MajorTrends in Jewish Mysticism. See Margolin, The Human Temple, p. 8.

acting. The dangers which myth and magic present to the religious

Boaz Huss

consciousness, including that of the mystic, are clearly shown inthe development of Kabbalism. If one turns to the writings ofthe great Kabbalists one seldom fails to be torn between alternateadmiration and disgust.78

Gershom Scholem, and in his wake his students, engaged in philologicaland historical study of the Zohar attaining most impressive achievementsin this area. It ought nevertheless to be emphasized that the school ofresearch established by Scholem sought to examine and to preservethe Kabbalistic writings, including the Zohar, as historical monuments(thus, as mentioned earlier, was the Zohar described by Adolf Franck)without acting towards their inclusion as active elements in thecontemporary cultural field. Nevertheless, there has been a uniqueattempt in the circle of Scholem's students to disseminate the Zohar toa broader public: namely, the impressive project of Isaiah Tishby andFishel Lachower, Mishnat ha-Zohar (the first volume of this work waspublished by Mossad Bialik in 1949; the second in 1961; while anabbreviated version, issued by Sifriyat Dorot, was published in 1969).The purpose of this book, as articulated by Tishby in his introductionto the first edition, was 'to open up these hidden riches for the Hebrewreader. It comprises an extensive anthology drawn from all sections ofthe Zohar'.79 It is interesting to note that, even though Tishby was astudent of Scholem, and Mishnat ha-Zohar to a large extent reflectsScholem's positions with regard to the Zohar, the initiative for thisproject came from Lachower and Horodezky.80 It should also beemphasized that Mishnat ha-Zohar is an anthology whose purpose is'to reflect the teachings of the Zohar and its literary character in anorderly and concentrated way'81 and not to present the Israeli readerwith a complete, comprehensive translation of the Zohar. In a certainsense, Mishnat ha-Zohar is a kind of realization of the anthologizing

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78 Scholem, Major Trends, p. 36.79 The Wisdom of the Zohar, p. XXV.80 Ibid., p. XXV. According to Zeev Greis, it was Gershom Scholem who pressured

Mossad Bialik to cancel its agreement with Horodezky, and convinced Tishby toteam up with Lachower to finish the project of Mishnat ha-Zohar. See Gries, 'OnTishby's Contribution' (above, n. 53). In wake of this, Horodezky took MossadBialik to court; consequently they published his introductions, separately fromMishnat ha-Zohar.

81 Ibid., p. XXV.

project proposed by Bialik, who had planned to publish a translation


of the Zohar within the framework of a larger project in which hehoped to collect and edit the classics of Jewish literature in the spiritof secular Zionism.82

VIII

Involvement with Sefer ha-Zohar during the mid 20th century has thusbeen limited to extremely narrow circles: on the one hand, to academicsin Israel and abroad by whom Scholem's approach to the Zohar has,until recently, been accepted without challenge; and, on the other, tothose isolated Kabbalistic yeshivas in which the students engage instudy (and, in the case of R. Yehudah Ashlag, also in commentary andtranslation) of the Zohar. The hegemonic Israeli-Zionist culture, whichprimarily revived traditional texts which were written in Hebrew andhad some affinity to the Land of Israel, did not find much interest in amedieval text that originated in Spain and was written in Aramaic.Reservations concerning the Kabbalah and the Zohar also played arole in removing traditional groups who believed in the authority andholiness of the Zohar - i.e., ultra-orthodox Jews from Eastern Europeand immigrants from Islamic countries - to the margins of Israelisociety.83 Thus, despite the involvement with the Zohar in academiccircles, Sefer ha-Zohar did not attain a significant presence, neither inmodern Israeli culture nor among Jewish communities abroad, whereReform and Conservative circles, enjoying cultural and religiousdominance, were not much interested in Sefer ha-Zohar.

In recent years there has been a certain change in this situation - achange related to world-wide post-modernist tendencies - which hasled to a renewed interest in mysticism and spirituality and in a blurring

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82 On Bialik's plan for an anthology, and his plan to include therein the translationof the Zohar, see Meir, 'Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar', pp. 120-124. On Bialik's reservationsabout Zeitlin and his Zohar translation project, see ibid., p. 139 n. 81. On Tishby'sseeing Mishnat ha-Zohar as continuing Bialik's plan, see ibid., p. 155.

83 See Huss, 'Ask No Questions', p. 147.84 See J. Garb, 'The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Day - Innovation

vs. Conservatism in the Thought of Yosef Ahituv' [Hebrew], in: A. Sagi and N.Ilan eds., Tarbut Yehudit be-‘Eyn ha-Se‘arah: Sefer Yovel Likhvod Yosef A˙ituv,Ein Ûurim 2002, pp. 194-196, 199; B. Huss, 'All You Need is LAV: Madonna

of the boundaries between modern Western and traditional cultures.84

Boaz Huss

Steps have been taken to disseminate R. Yehudah Ashlag's Hebrewtranslation of the Zohar, the Sulam, together with additional translationsand commentaries on the Zohar in Hebrew.85 More recently the Zoharwith the Sulam commentary have been translated into English byMichael Berg, the son of Philip Berg, founder of the Kabbalah Center.86

Classes in Zohar are offered to the broader public in various frameworks,including the Internet. Kabbalistic, including Zoharic motifs, havebecome part of popular culture as well.87 A song based upon wordsfrom Sefer ha-Zohar (in the translation of the Sulam), entitled 'QolGalgal' ('The Sound of the Wheel') was set to music by the 'Shoteiha-Nevuah' rock group.88

In academic circles as well there has been a certain change in theapproach to Sefer ha-Zohar, including challenges to Gershom Scholem'sassumptions concerning the composition of Sefer ha-Zohar. YehudaLiebes, in his 'How was the Zohar Written?', challenged the presumptionof textual unity of (most) of Sefer ha-Zohar and its attribution toMoses de Leon, suggesting 'the possibility that the Zohar is the workof a whole group that dealt together with doctrines of the Kabbalah, onthe basis of a common heritage and ancient texts'. 89 This assumptionalso underlies the research of Ronit Meroz, who has in recent years

236

and Postmodern Kabbalah', JQR 95 (2005), pp. 611-624.85 Yehudah Edri and Shlomo Ha-Kohen undertook a new and comprehensive

translation of the Zohar into Hebrew, published in 1998. The extensivecommentaries on Sefer ha-Zohar of Daniel Frisch (Matoq mi-Devash, Jerusalem1993-1999) and Yehiel Bar-Lev (Yedid Nefesh, Peta˙ Tikva 1992-1997) alsoinclude translations of the Zohar into Hebrew.

86 M. Berg, The Zohar, with the Sulam Commentary by Yehuda Ashlag, New York2003.

87 The most widely-known example of this is the incorporation of Kabbalisticmotifs in the cultural products of the superstar of popular post-modern culture,Madonna. On this see Huss, 'All You Need is LAV', pp. 611-624.

88 The song is included in the album, Me˙apsim et Dorot (Helicon Records, 2004).The words of the song are taken from the Tosephta in Parshat Vaye˙i, Zohar I:233b.

89 Y. Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, Albany 1993, p. 88 [originally published inHebrew, 'How Was the Zohar Written?', Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8(1989), p. 5].

90 The preliminary results of her research appear in her articles: R. Meroz, 'Ezekiel's

been involved in a comprehensive study of the Zoharic literature.90


New projects involving the translation of the Zohar into Englishand French by academic scholars have been undertaken. Charles Mopsikbegan a project of translating the Zohar into French in 1981,91 whileDaniel Matt published the first three volumes of his translation of theZohar in 2004-05.92 Both translations are based upon a philological-historical approach to the Zohar, and to a large extent accept GershomScholem's guidelines regarding its composition. At the same time,their enterprise is intended to circulate the Zohar among a wider publicand to integrate it within contemporary spiritual and cultural life.93 Itseems to me that these phenomena, alongside other expressions ofinterest in the Zohar in postmodern culture, signal the beginning of anew era in the history of the reception of Sefer ha-Zohar.

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Chariot - An Unknown Zoharic Commentary' [Hebrew], Te‘udah 16-17 (2001),pp. 567-616; idem., '"And I Wasn't There?!" Rashbi's Complaint According toan Unknown Zoharic Story' [Hebrew], TarbiΩ 71 (2002), pp. 163-193.

91 Le Zohar, traduction, annotation et avant propos par Charles Mopsik, 4 vols,Paris 1981-1994.

92 The Zohar, translation and commentary by D. C. Matt, Stanford 2004-2005(vols. 1-3).

93 It should be noted that the late Professor R. Schatz Uffenheimer formulated aplan to translate the Zohar together with a large team of scholars as part of herMif'al ha-Zohar, which was terminated upon her death in 1992. See Z. Rubin,'Mif‘al ha-Zohar: Mattarot ve-Hessegim', in: Asuppat Kiryat Sefer (1998), pp.167-74. Dr. Ronit Meroz told me that she also plans a translation of the Zohar inthe framework of the research with which she has been engaged in recent years.

admiration and disgust: the ambivalent re-canonization of the

Documents